


playing pick-up

by deplore



Category: Kuroko no Basuke | Kuroko's Basketball
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-26
Updated: 2014-01-26
Packaged: 2018-01-10 01:49:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,800
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1153333
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deplore/pseuds/deplore
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Hey, Kagami,” Aomine asks. “You live in Las Vegas, right?”</p><p>“What? No,” Kagami replies, readjusting his phone underneath his shoulder as he flips through a textbook in a vain attempt to decipher his statistics homework. “I live in Los Angeles. Not Las Vegas.”</p><p>“Well, I’m in the airport at Las Vegas right now,” Aomine begins, and Kagami doesn’t even want to hear the rest.</p>
            </blockquote>





	playing pick-up

“Hey, Kagami,” Aomine asks. “You live in Las Vegas, right?”

“What? No,” Kagami replies, readjusting his phone underneath his shoulder as he flips through a textbook in a vain attempt to decipher his statistics homework. “I live in _Los Angeles_. Not Las Vegas.”

“Oh, well. Fuck,” Aomine says, and sighs.

Kagami does not like the sound of that. He drops the book immediately. “What is it,” he asks flatly.

“So I’m in the airport at Las Vegas right now,” Aomine begins, and Kagami doesn’t even want to hear the rest.

 

* * *

 

But five-odd hours later, Kagami is _also_ at the McCarran International Airport, and somewhat thankful that Tatsuya pestered him into getting a driver’s license as a freshman. “Can you try to look a little bit grateful that I came to rescue your dumb ass?” he asks as Aomine gets into the passenger’s seat, holding a packaged sandwich. “And don’t eat in the car, I don’t want it to get dirty. It’s not mine.”

Aomine opens the glove compartment and tosses his sandwich in there. “There,” Aomine says.

“Oh my god,” Kagami groans. “Fuck you, Aomine. Fuck you so hard.”

“Whoa, frisky. Didn’t know carsex was your thing,” Aomine replies, sniggering as he props his feet up on the dashboard.

Kagami tightens his grip on the wheel. “Don’t make me angry when I’m driving, Aomine. I get road rage,” he says. It’s (mostly) a lie, but he can’t help but feel very self-satisfied when Aomine very quickly rearranges himself into a proper sitting form and takes the sandwich back out.

“What am I supposed to do, keep this on my lap? It’s plastic-wrapped, it’s not like it was hurting anybody in there,” Aomine grumbles.

He does have a point. Kagami relents and allows the sandwich to go back into the glove compartment. “Don’t even fucking try me right now, I swear to god,” Kagami says, just in case Aomine’s gotten the wrong idea about how nice he feels at the moment. “I’ve basically wasted my entire day driving here and back to L.A., I hope you realize.”

The car is very quiet. Kagami wonders if Aomine has actually developed a sense of shame and is properly reflecting, but then he looks over and realizes Aomine is completely conked out, mouth open and head lolling against the back of his seat. Rationally, Kagami knows that it’s probably jetlag, but that makes it no less annoying.

“I should dump you in the desert,” Kagami mutters as he switches lanes into the highway exit, but he just keeps on driving.

 

* * *

 

It’s not until they’re just entering Los Angeles that Aomine awakens with a huge yawn, wiping the drool off of his cheek before looking around blearily. “Great, it wasn’t a dream,” he says. “You really did come all the way to Los Angeles to get me.”

“To Las Vegas,” Kagami corrects. “Los Angeles is where we are now.”

“Whatever, it’s basically all the same thing,” Aomine says carelessly.

Kagami refuses to dignify that with a response, mostly because he doesn’t want to lose his temper while operating a moving vehicle. “So, when are you gonna tell me why you’re in the U.S. and not Japan?” he asks instead. “Don’t you have, you know — a career?”

“It’s the off-season,” Aomine replies.

“Yeah, well, you can always train more,” Kagami grumbles.

Aomine scowls and leans back in his seat. “All work and no play is boring as hell. Besides, I’m already here, so what does it really matter.”

Sadly, he does have a point with that one. “So how long are you here for?” Kagami asks.

“‘Til whenever I wanna leave, I guess,” Aomine answers, shrugging.

They hit city traffic then, so Kagami decides not to continue that line of conversation in favor of concentrating on the road. The car is Tatsuya’s, and he’s pretty sure if he gets into an accident, Tatsuya won’t let him live long enough to regret it. He stays stonily silent until he’s safely parked the car in the lot closest to Tatsuya’s dorm, pointedly ignoring Aomine’s off-handed comments on how big Los Angeles is and that there seem to be more Asians around than he expected and _holy freaking shit, Kagami, that girl’s tits are practically falling out of her shirt!_

Unlike Tatsuya, Kagami lives in an apartment off of UCLA campus — it’s not far, but it’s still a long enough walk back that it just adds to his bad mood. “We’re getting out here,” Kagami says, turning the car off and locking the door behind them after Aomine’s grabbed his duffel bag out of the trunk. “I still can’t believe you put me through all that. It’s already past seven, I just wasted my entire Saturday on you when I could’ve been doing better things with my life.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Aomine says, who is clearly not listening. “Anyway, I’m starving, can we go eat somewhere?”

Even though Aomine doesn’t deserve the glory of In-N-Out burgers, Kagami figures that he’s allowed to reward himself for all the bullshit he’s gone through. It’s more than worth the extra walking distance.

 

* * *

 

Somewhere between his eighth and ninth Double-Double, Kagami suddenly thinks up another problem with Aomine randomly appearing in the United States, barely able to say “hello, I need help” in English, and being very fixated on how much more publicly acceptable showing cleavage is in L.A. than it is in Tokyo. He swallows and washes the cheese down with a mouthful of water. “You need to find a hotel,” he says.

Aomine somehow manages to tear his eyes away from the group of three girls giggling at a table on the other side of the restaurant. “What? I can just stay with you, can’t I?” he asks.

“I only have one bed at my place,” Kagami replies.

“Wow, Kagami. It’s not like we’ve never shared a bed before,” Aomine says, rolling his eyes.

Kagami goes quiet at that. Instead of answering, he unwraps his next burger, crumpling the paper in his hands with more force than strictly necessary. He manages to down it in roughly four bites and fully expects Aomine to make a comment on how much meat he can handle in his mouth, but Aomine just stares at him quizzically, as if _he’s_ the one completely out of place in this situation. When he’s done with it, Kagami sighs sharply and says, “Fine, stay over. But I’m making you sleep on the floor and you better not complain about it.”

Aomine shrugs and goes back to mooning over girls’ chests. Kagami munches his way through the remaining pile of food on his tray, eating slower than he usually does.

 

* * *

 

The first thing he does when he gets back to his apartment is turn on his laptop and call Kuroko on Skype — it’s already late enough at night on the West Coast that it’s a decent time of day in Japan. “Hey, did you know Aomine is here?” he asks when Kuroko picks up, not bothering with a greeting. “As in, right here, literally at my apartment.”

For a few moments, Kuroko just stares placidly, but Kagami has known him long enough to recognize an annoyed expression when he sees one. “Excuse me,” Kuroko says. “I thought you said something ridiculous like ‘Aomine-kun is in my apartment right now’.”

Aomine chooses this moment to prop his head on Kagami’s shoulder. “Kagami’s Japanese hasn’t gone that far to shit, Tetsu,” he replies. Kagami can see him smirking on the video feed and resists the urge to shake him off forcibly.

“So you really are in America,” Kuroko says, and sighs. “Aomine-kun… this is a little much, even for you. Does Momoi-san know about this, at least?”

“Do you think I’d be here if I’d told Satsuki first?” Aomine asks.

Kuroko is visibly unimpressed with his point, as valid as it is. “I can tell her or you can, but I think you would rather,” he says. “At any rate, this trip seems to be rather… ill-advised. Doesn’t it?”

“Hey, it’s not bothering anybody,” Aomine says.

“Except my wallet, since you don’t even have any American money and couldn’t pay for your own damn dinner,” Kagami interrupts. “Not to mention my ability to study. So basically, yeah, it is bothering somebody.”

Kuroko glances between the two of them. “I can see there are other underlying issues that need to be worked out first, but Aomine-kun — please try to come home as soon as possible,” he says. “I don’t think I can be of much help to either of you, unfortunately.”

Before Kagami can open his mouth to complain or question what Kuroko means by _other underlying issues_ , Kuroko hangs up the call and signs off of Skype with supernatural speed — it’s not a particularly subtle way of saying, “no, I refuse to get involved in this, work things out by yourselves”. Kagami sighs deeply, and for the umpteenth time in his life, mentally curses everybody he’s ever met who graduated from Teikou Middle School.

 

* * *

 

Kagami is long past the idea of getting any work done, so he decides to just call it quits early and take a shower before going to bed. “You can sleep here,” he announces, after he’s finished rolling out an old sleeping bag for Aomine in the living room.

“You’re really gonna make me sleep on the floor?” Aomine asks. Judging from his tone, Kagami can gather that Aomine honestly thought he was bluffing about it earlier.

“Or you can have the sofa,” Kagami says, but his sofa is more like a loveseat for people of their height, and Aomine would have to fold his knees over the armrest to fit on it.

Aomine gives him an odd stare for a few moments, but nods. “I’m moving it to your room, though,” he replies, “‘cause you have window shades in there but not in here and I don’t wanna get up with the sun.”

“Seriously, why the hell are you here? And bossing me around in my own apartment?” Kagami grumbles, but he picks up the sleeping bag to move it anyway.

“You’re such an idiot,” Aomine tells him, raising an eyebrow. “Do you actually need everything spelled out for you?” he asks.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Kagami snaps back, because he knows he’s not exactly the sharpest pencil in the box, but he can’t really stand to have his intellect insulted by Aomine Daiki, of all people.

Aomine reaches out and touches him on the cheek lightly, letting go before Kagami can even register exactly what’s happening and stepping back, scratching the back of his neck awkwardly. “Bathroom,” Aomine says, and escapes from having to explain himself.

 

* * *

 

(Kagami and Aomine never went out, not exactly. Sure, there was a period of time during high school when they would see each other a couple times a week for one-on-ones and go shopping for sports stuff together and hang out at each others’ places and sometimes — not always — they’d make out with each other. But it’s not like they ever gave each other chocolates on Valentine’s Day or held hands in public or called each other pet names in text messages, unless endearing nicknames like “fucking moron” or “shitty idiot” count. There were never any significant four-letter words exchanged between them, except when both of them would mutually agree: “I _hate_ school work.” Kagami remembers being alright with all of that. He is fairly certain he didn’t want things to change.

Thus: despite the fact that all their mutual friends pretty much treated them as a package deal, they were never actually dating. Probably.

 _Probably_.

At any rate, when Kagami announced he was leaving the country and going back to the United States to attend UCLA on a sports scholarship while Aomine would stay in Tokyo and play for the Tokyo Cinq Rêves in the bj league, they simply drifted apart, in the worst kind of break-up: an unresolved one.

But it’s not a break-up if they were never going out in the first place, right?

 _Right_.)

 

* * *

 

Kagami stirs in the middle of the night — he yawns and glances over at the clock on his nightstand: it’s just past 3AM. Aomine seems to have finally abandoned the Internet for sleep and is settling into the sleeping bag on the floor. “Aomine?” he calls out sleepily.

“Just go back to sleep, Kagami,” Aomine replies, before cocooning himself in the sleeping bag with his back turned to Kagami’s bed.

He has enough time for conscious thought to register a moment of surprise that Aomine hadn’t done what he used to do back when they were in high school and Kagami had tried to force him onto the floor during nights over. “We can both fit,” he’d insist, even though they totally both could not fit, and press himself into Kagami’s bed anyway. But Kagami doesn’t have the mental energy at the moment to recall that the bed in his Los Angeles apartment is bigger than the one he had in Tokyo, and the siren call of sleep lures him back in before the surprise can fade away to other, more uncomfortable emotions — say, disappointment.

 

* * *

 

When Kagami gets up, Aomine has somehow managed to splay himself across the floor, as if he were unconsciously trying to take up as much surface area as possible and therefore make it unnecessarily difficult for Kagami to get out of his own room. Once he’s tiptoed his way out, Kagami cooks a stack of pancakes for himself and finishes off the last of his eggs to make a fluffy tortilla española with onions and red peppers, enough that even after he’s done eating there’s still plenty leftover. He cleans up his plate and gets started on his backlog of work, hoping that Aomine will stay crashed out long enough that he can get decent headway on it.

Aomine emerges just before noon, just as Kagami has finished taking a break for lunch. “Hey, is this for me? Thanks,” Aomine says, not waiting for an answer before he scarfs down what’s left of the omelette without bothering to warm it up first.

It’s only a matter of time before Aomine starts getting restless — after going through all the channels on Kagami’s television three times, he tosses the remote away and starts pacing around the apartment, like an alleycat resisting domestication. Kagami manages to get through another page of his sports psychology essay when Aomine slides into the chair across from him and says, “Hey, Kagami. Let’s play some streetball.” He’s found one of Kagami’s basketballs (no difficult task, seeing as Kagami always forgets to put them away) and is spinning it on a finger idly.

Kagami knows he should say no, because he’s still got plenty of homework left. But on the other hand, everything that’s left is genuinely incomprehensible to him, he’s finished everything due on Monday, and he has a lot of excess frustration to vent. “You’re on a professional basketball team,” Kagami points out, “and sure, it’s a Japanese team, but _still_. You’re not gonna get much of a challenge asking random people to play pick-up with you.”

“Not if you’re coming with,” Aomine retorts, tossing him the ball. Kagami drops his pencil to catch it on reflex. “Or are you finally admitting that my skills are superior?”

The worst thing is that Kagami totally knows he’s being egged on but he’s still falling for it. “Screw you, Aomine,” he says, but he pushes his chair back to get up. “Give me ten minutes to get changed.”  

 

* * *

 

They find another pair of people looking for a game and start up a round of 21 in the hopes of attracting two more people for three-on-three. “What’s 21?” Aomine asks blankly, after Kagami explains the plan that he’s worked out with the other pair.

“Right, I forgot, people don’t really play that in Japan,” Kagami says, and starts to give him a brief run-down of the rules.

“Nah, it’s alright,” Aomine interrupts, shrugging and rubbing the back of his head. “Just start the game — I’ll figure it out on the go.”

As usual, Aomine is quick to pick up on basketball if nothing else. After a few rounds (and the excited discovery that personal fouls are completely legal), Aomine quickly wracks up the points. The other two in their game rapidly fade into non-entities as Kagami and Aomine face up against each other, but eventually Kagami ends up winning because Aomine shoots a three-pointer when his score was already at 19, taking him past the end goal of exactly 21 points and kicking him back to 11. It is not without an intense feeling of smugness that Kagami makes his last lay-up, bringing his count of 19 up to 21 and ending the game.

“Whose skills are superior, huh?” Kagami gloats, even though he’s still out of breath.

“Yeah, okay, so you can _add_ better than me,” Aomine grumbles, “but who ended up with more points, huh?”

“Whatever,” Kagami says, smirking before turning to the other pair they’d been playing with. “Hey, thanks for the game,” he tells them in English and grinning. They’d held out valiantly despite being so thoroughly outclassed, managing to take 11 points between the two of them.

“No prob, but geez, you guys are monsters,” the taller of them replies, wiping his forehead of sweat. “I had no idea foreign basketball was at that level.”

“Well, he’s kind of an exception,” Kagami admits, only because he knows that Aomine can’t understand him.

They take an empty half-court and stick to one-on-one after that. “First to get ten baskets, then we’re heading back,” Kagami says, but then Aomine beats him 10-9 so he pushes it to best out of fifteen. Aomine forces it to best out of twenty when Kagami manages to squeak out a victory, and eventually both of them collectively lose track of what they were playing to. Aomine makes Kagami run around the court more than he’s absolutely had to in a very long time, but Kagami doesn’t mind — the burn in his calves is more welcome than painful, the push and pull of their gameflow is intimately familiar. After three years of playing against each other, Kagami knows how Aomine moves and thinks and plays on the court just as well as Aomine knows Kagami in the same sense, so both of them drop any unnecessary thoughts like if _I do this — he’ll do that — so I have to — unless he also_ — and like that, they both run on pure instinct

 _If Aomine could be half as clear off the court as he is on it_ , Kagami thinks hazily to himself as he narrowly catches a fake to the left. He catches Aomine’s expression as he reacts to the block, and if anything, Aomine seems all the more excited because Kagami isn’t letting him have his way so easily.

Some realizations are a spark-of-the-moment, sudden-flash-of-inspiration sort of deal, like the proverbial apple falling on your head. Others slide into place slowly and carefully, so naturally that the thought feels like it’s always been there. The longer they play, the more Kagami realizes: _I get it. I get it. I get it._

 

* * *

 

Once they’ve both exhausted each other, they walk back to Kagami’s apartment in silence. Aomine uses the ball to do party tricks with his stupidly casual grace while Kagami watches and for a while, both of them pretend like that takes up too much of their attention to properly engage in conversation.

“I missed that, y’know,” Kagami finally admits, just as Aomine starts to wind down. “And I don’t just mean playing together. Just… all of it. I missed you. Fuck, that was more sentimental than I thought it would be.”

Aomine’s quiet for a few more moments, but then he tosses the ball up on the tips of his fingers before catching it and tucking it underneath his arm. “Took you long enough to figure it out,” he replies.

“Well, you could have just said why you came here when I asked instead of beating all the way around the damn bush,” Kagami points out, but more on principle than because he’s actually irritated.

“Well, I’m not Los Angeles ‘cause I wanna make out with Kobe Bryant, so I _thought_ it would be kinda obvious,” Aomine says.

“Why can you not say something slightly more thoughtful than that,” Kagami replies, not completely serious.

Aomine laughs, the kind of laugh that comes straight from the middle of the chest — a sound that’s loud and full and vibrant. “Okay, then. I only want to make out with you, Kagami Taiga,” he says, “which is kind of hard when we’re on two different continents.”

It’s not much of an improvement, but Kagami decides he can accept that.

 

* * *

 

Naturally, the thing to do is go back to Kagami’s place and make out, then make and eat dinner, then make out some more.

Somewhere in between kissing on the sofa and kissing on the bed, Kagami has a second revelation:  “I just remembered something,” he says. “You left a sandwich in the glove compartment of Tatsuya’s car and never took it out.”

Aomine bursts out laughing, and Kagami ends up joining in despite himself.

 

* * *

 

Sending Aomine back to Japan, thankfully, is a much easier task picking him up. Kagami takes charge of buying his ticket after cross-referencing the decision with Kuroko to make sure there’s at least one responsible party at each end of the flight, and drops Aomine off at the Los Angeles International Airport on Monday night. “Next time, could you just call or something? Seriously, I mean it,” Kagami says gruffly, mostly because he’s not really sure how to say good-bye.

“Mmhmm, yeah,” Aomine replies flippantly. “Next time I’ll let you before I get on the plane, how’s that?”

“I’m telling you not to get on the plane in the first place, moron,” Kagami says, but there’s not much heat in his tone.

Aomine smirks at him. “Hey, don’t pretend like you didn’t enjoy yourself.”

“I have an insane amount of homework to catch up on because you took over my entire damn weekend,” Kagami tells him, “I had to call Tatsuya and explain to him why there’s a shitty airplane food-quality sandwich in his car, and you even made me pay for your flight back.” There’s a pause. “But it wasn’t bad, I guess. Now get out of here before I change my mind on that.”

“Yeah, love you too,” Aomine replies, smirking as he turns to leave.

(Kagami is forced to reassess: he and Aomine never went out, not exactly, but only because it’s not quite accurate to put it in the past tense when — _regrettably_ — they’re clearly still going out now.)


End file.
